TV Review - The Wire

Season Three (2004)
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

"Why tonight? What happened?"

"I was in my old district tonight, which is where I used to feel - pretty good, I think. I wasn't so angry when I was there, anyway."

Sorry ladies, I'm in love with Jimmy McNulty.

Movie Review - Casino Royale

Casino Royale (2006)
directed by Martin Campbell
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
seen on the screen at Oxford Studio Cinema

Barbara Cauliflower can't reinvent Bond when he's imploding waterfront Venetian property with a machine gun - intimate or crass, pick one or the other, stick to it - but some moments - lines, looks, gestures - and one actor - blue-eyed Daniel Craig - do their British best. Best since Roger Moore, but I miss the Russians.

Movie Review - The Notorious Betty Page

The Notorious Betty Page (2005)
directed by Mary Harron
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from As Seen On TV

This is a mediocre biopic. But I haven't wanted to sleep with an actress more since Naomi Watts auditioned with the tan guy in Mulholland Dr. It has nothing to with Betty Page and everything to do with Gretchen Mol. As Maeby said to Mort, "Marry me!"

Movie Review - The Ballad of Cable Hogue

The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970)
directed by Sam Peckinpah
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from the vaults

"Ballad" is right, even against a theme song that rivals Jim Croce's contribution to The Last American Hero for best example of nowhere-but-the-seventies carbon dating. Nothing would surprise me less than learning that Roger Corman had a secret hand in the top-heavy tits-and-ass editing, or that there's more to Thunderbolt and Lightfoot than Jeff Bridges and Dirty Harry.

Movie Review - No Way Out

No Way Out (1950)
directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from JL

If you know someone who thinks that Virgil Tibbs demanding to be called "Mister" ranks right up there with Everett Sloane's "she was carrying a white parasol" number in Citizen Kane, please recommend "No Way Out" as the also-ran contender on his or her list of Richard Widmark's most mediocre villains, Mankiewicz's soppiest productions, and the twentieth-century's guiltiest liberal-guilt photoplays.

TV Review - Veronica Mars

Season Two (2005-2006)
directed by ...
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from JL

Waking to find it wasn't an overdose, but instead a spiraling addiction to speed-screening television shows after sunset, our hero looks up, remembers Logan romancing Veronica - "spanning years and continents, lives ruined and blood shed" - and chooses that moment to remember an otherwise uncomfortable mix of fictionalized teen issues by.

TV Review - Justice League

Season Two (2003-2004)
directed by Butch Lukic & Dan Riba
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

It's mostly my journalistic integrity that compels me to mention watching this at all, since nothing I say about "Justice League" will sell it to those of you who haven't already made a Netflix date on the batphone. Only that epic can be Nothing!

Movie Review - Borat

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
directed by Larry Charles
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
seen on the screen at Oxford Studio Cinema

I think it's possible to love something and not kill it with hyperbole (not that you'd always believe that on this blog). Sacha Baron Cohen, who - in his show and again in this movie - stands up for the one person everyone around him runs down, trumps that fast-forgotten, flat-footed Ali G feature with a nimble, gentle "Borat." And it really has nothing to do with outrage or standing in the White House driveway or showing up in Cannes dressed in green and oxfords. There's a lot of warmth in "Borat," and that's enough.

Movie Review - Dust Devil

Dust Devil (1992)
directed by Richard Stanley
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

This is exactly the sort of half-cocked, superficial African witch doctor/demonic possession/unnecessary aerial shots horror movie that should be playing in theaters every three weeks. Instead I have to read about what a visionary Guillermo del Toro is and wait in breathless anticipation for Saw IV.

TV Review - The Wire

Season Two (2003)
same rules as last time
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

"We used to make shit in this country. Build shit. Now we just put our hands in the next guy's pocket."

If I've got my hand in any pockets, kids, it's show creators Ed Burns' and David Simon's (although I guess that's a George Pelecanos misquote up there).

Halloween Night Double Feature

Doctor X (1932)
directed by Michael Curtiz
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from the vaults

Halloween (1978)
directed by John Carpenter
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from the vaults

Over and beyond the usual superlatives for Dean Cundey's blue filter or Ray Rennahan's sickly two-strip fog, both movies' male protagonists - neither one of them their narratives' center - feel unusual for an assurance of action both careless and completely committed. And Sam Loomis, in his way, is that same intrepid and pure-hearted yellow journalist, from his toes to his sense of humor (though without, of course, Fay Wray).